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Faculty and staff members of the biology department will be able to move into the new energy-efficient Biological Sciences building in July.

The new building, located on the corner of Forest Drive and Akins Boulevard, will be for biology majors in upper division courses, leaving the older biology building for CORE biology classes.

“Eventually there will be a change in the bus route for students to have access to this building, but the details are not clear,” Dr. Stephen Vives, department chair and professor of biology, said. “The building will include, five classrooms, 10 teaching labs and 15 research labs.”

All of the labs are state-of-the-art, meaning everything will work nicely, Donald Schneider, president of the Biology Organization of Graduate Students, said.

Each lecture classroom will hold up to 72 people.

“The fact that there are different types of teaching rooms provides us with different teaching styles,” Vives said. “The goal was to make the classrooms more hands-on for the students and less lecture.”

All research will be done in the new building, Schneider said.

“We will definitely have a large increase in research space”, Vives said.

“I think it is good that students who are biology majors, get to go to just this building for classes,” Kayla Strickland, sophomore education major, said. “I think they should have dining services in the new building.”

The building will be constructed and furnished by the end of June.